description of ancient kingdom of Ghana

The earliest extant Arabic reference to a kingdom of Ghana dates from the early 9th century. In the middle of the 11th century, the Córdoban geographer Abū Uʿbayd al-Bakrī described its capital, court, and trade in some detail. The capital was made up of two towns, a stone-built town inhabited by the Muslim traders and a mud-built one of the local Mande in which the king...